It's easy to grow up alone and think, "There isn't anyone in the world like me." You like videogames, read manga, collect figures and statues, and you're deathly afraid of talking to girls. You pretty much give up on ever having what everyone else considers a normal life, relegating yourself to be an eternal bachelor. I believed that for the longest time, but that was before learning of Densha Otoko, a manga that shows the social outcasts often known as otaku aren't alone, and through it all there is one thing…hope.

Densha Otoko: The Story of the Train Man Who Fell in Love With A Girl – released by CMX - is the story of a boy, who is characteristically the living embodiment of the term otaku. He's extremely shy, doesn't standup for himself, loves anime, and lives a second life on the Internet where he is able to easily chat with others just like himself.

The boy eventually finds himself on a train where an older man is harassing young women, and for the first time in his life he just can't tolerate it anymore, and thus makes a stand in defense of a young girl who happened to catch his eye. In what turns out to be a life changing moment, he suddenly finds himself talking to the girl, and with the very real possibility of a date…if only he knew how to act. Thankfully for Train – as his Internet community starts to call him – he has online friends to help shape him into the mold of a man that he has no experience being.

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The book is told in a dual nature, taking place both in the real world and in the online world. The online world is composed almost entirely of black space, filled with floating cat-like head avatars. In a credit to both the writer and artist, the heads are given such distinct voices and personalities, even they are brought to life and will instantly strike a bond with the reader.

The beauty of Densha Otoko is that the story works on so many different levels, each one potentially more profound than the last. The story is at its heart a love story, but beyond that it's a look at not only the stereotypical otaku, but an analysis of online social networks as well. For example, while some might find such communities fake and a waste, for others they are a lifeline to a world they don't know how to reach normally. Throughout his adventures in this first volume, Train also runs across his fellow online friends in the real world, though only the reader is clued into this fact since Train hasn't ever met any of these other people before. The introductions serve the purpose of cleverly adding more characters into the fray, but beyond anything else, it shows that maybe we aren't as alone in this world as we might think, and that there are others like us all around, but we just aren't necessarily looking for them as hard as we could.

Densha Otoko is an emotionally wrought story, which will tug at your heart the more you find yourself relating to Train. It's a well-written first volume and the art is simple, but never simplistic (except for the avatar chats, but those are handled just as they should be). I highly recommend that everyone give Densha Otoko a read, but especially those people, like myself, looking for a little hope that change is possible. Perhaps you'll even start to wear the word otaku like a badge of honor, instead of letting society treat you like a leper.

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